The present disclosure, for example, relates to wireless communication systems, and more particularly to synchronizing presentation of content streamed from a source to multiple sinks.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). A wireless network, for example a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), such as a Wi-Fi network (IEEE 802.11) may include an access point (AP) that may communicate with one or more stations (STAs) or mobile devices. The AP may be coupled to a network, such as the Internet, and enable a mobile device to communicate via the network (and/or communicate with other devices coupled to the access point).
A mobile device may desire to share content with other mobile devices and other devices such as TVs, computers, audio systems, and the like. Typically one device (e.g., a source device) may wirelessly stream content to another device (e.g., a sink device) for presentation. Examples of a source device may include a smartphone, tablet, and the like. Examples of a sink device may include a TV, computer screen, speaker etc. In some applications, the source device may transmit the media stream over a Wi-Fi peer-to-peer wireless link or over an infrastructure wireless link. In situations where a source device streams content to multiple sink devices, presentation of the content at each sink device may require timing synchronization to avoid delays, echoes, etc. However, conventional methods of streaming content to multiple sink devices lack means for supporting synchronized presentation of the content to within a high degree of accuracy.